Is North Korea Testing Biological Weapons on Children?

Yet even if some defector stories are untrue, fleeing North Koreans, over time, have told essentially the same story, thereby unintentionally corroborating each other. For instance, Kwon Hyok, formerly the chief of security at the now-infamous Camp 22, states that small groups of people were led into a chamber with glass windows and suffocated with gas while technicians observed the gruesome process. Compare this to the testimony of Im Chun-yong, a former North Korean commando. He says one of his soldiers told him of a facility on an island off the country’s west coast where people were put into a glass chamber. “Poisonous gas was injected in,” Im says, relating the story secondhand. “He watched doctors time how long it took for them to die.”

Kim Sang-hun says that when he was a UN official he had interviewed hundreds of fleeing citizens, and most of them talked about the horrifying testing. “Human experimentation is a widespread practice,” he notes.

Im, once a captain in Brigade No. 19, a special forces unit, confirms the experimentation is commonplace and also alleges that the government uses mentally and physically handicapped children, relating the story of his commander, who was essentially forced to give up his 12-year-old mentally ill daughter in the early 1990s. There may be as many as five locations where such testing takes place, says Kim, the former UN official.

North Korea is not only testing chemical and biological weapons, it is also rehearsing their use. Im said he was given training on firing a “bazooka-style” weapon delivering WMD.

Would North Korea actually use its chemical and biological weapons? Im, for one, is convinced Kim Jong Il would not hesitate to do so. The country, after all, is run by ruthless men and women who have committed horrific acts in the past. Killing their own citizens, especially the handicapped, is consistent with all we know about the criminals responsible for the most abhorrent regime on earth today.